Turn with me, if you would, now
to the book of Acts chapter 12. Acts chapter 12. Eight years ago, I preached from
this particular portion of scripture on this particular day of the
year because verse four has the word Easter in it. It's the only time the word Easter
is in the Bible, one time. Verse one right here says, now
about that time, Herod the king stretched forth his hands to
vex certain of the church, and he killed James the brother of
John with the sword, and because he saw it pleased the Jews, he
proceeded further to take Peter also. Then were the days of unleavened
bread. And when he had apprehended him,
he put him in prison, and delivered him to four quaternions of soldiers
to keep him, intending after Easter to bring him forth to
the people. I titled that message eight years
ago, The True Meaning of Easter. And I got to thinking about that
this week. I was, you know, preparing like
I do for Sunday, and I was thinking about that and that message,
and it sparked what I want to say and what I want us to look
at today. Easter is a holiday, which that
comes from the word holy day. You get the word holiday from
holy day. It's a day acknowledged by Christians
throughout the world. It's a day that is set apart. That means sanctified. When you
sanctify something, you set that one apart. It's set apart and
it's reverenced and it's treated as a holy day by Christians throughout
the world. Now, for anyone who hears this
on the internet in the future, I want it to be known that I
just made the quotes symbol with my fingers when I said Christians. And the reason I did that is
because there is a difference in Christians and true believers
and followers of Christ. There is a difference. People
in this country say they are Christian in the same way that
they say I'm Irish. or I'm German, I'm German, stanniker. Okay, I'm German. People here
like to say they're Irish. Everybody wants to be Irish. They don't literally live in
Ireland and they don't speak Irish. What they're saying is,
that's who my people were. That's what I was born into.
That's what they're saying. Well, just like there is a difference
in an American from Kingsport saying he's Irish and an Irish-speaking Irishman
from Ireland, there's a difference in Christians
and true believers and followers of Christ. And true believers
and followers of Christ do not look to, they do not reverence
and they do not worship a day. They look to reverence and worship
Christ. It's all about Christ. To a true believer and follower
of Christ, today is no different from any other day. to a true believer and follower
of Christ, this is the day that the Lord has made. And they will
rejoice and be glad in it. I'm thankful for today, let it
be known. Like the weather has made me so happy. And the fact
that we're all gathered here to worship has made me so happy.
I'm thankful for today, just like I'm thankful for every day
that the Lord has given to us. But for a true child of God,
nothing shares the importance and the reverence or the reason
why we're coming here with Christ. Nothing shares that affection
with him. Nothing takes that focus and
attention away from him, not even a day that is supposed to
be bringing attention to him. To a child of God, this day is
no different from any other day because it's all about him every
day. It's all about him every day. We bring attention to him every
day. If we give more importance to
one day than another day, what we're doing is we're making an
idol out of that day. We may not realize it, But if
a particular day of the year has captured our attention and
captured our reverence, we've made an idol out of that day. Our reverence and our respect
is not fully completely given to Christ because it's given
to that day. So in thinking about today, thinking
about this service, thinking about the events that will take
place with many people in this country, all throughout the world,
there will be a service of some kind. And then an Easter feast, also
known as lunch somewhere. And then some people, We'll hide
eggs for the kids to find. And it'll be a celebration. It'll
be a celebration. It'll be a feast, a feast day.
Thinking about that made me want to look at the feast days that
God Almighty commanded. The feast days that got all of
this started in the first place. And that's what we're gonna do.
I don't want this, I'm very, I'm trying to be very deliberate
about this. I don't want this to just be a history lesson.
I don't want this to be a college lecture. I just want us to get our minds
around what God commanded in these feast days and why he commanded
them and what they are pointing us to. what we should see from
all of this. I'm just gonna show you something
and then tell you something, and then I'm gonna stop. I'm
gonna try to keep it that simple if I can. I just wanna show you,
tell you, and stop. It's gonna be a little bit of
a Bible study. but I really do think you'll
enjoy this. I really do. I think this will be very enjoyable.
I think you'll enjoy seeing this and learning this. I learned
a lot from this study. I was confused on some of these
things and I was very blessed by the end result. All right,
I hope you will be blessed, okay? Verse four says, when he had
apprehended him, he put him in prison and delivered him to four
quaternions of soldiers to keep him intending after Easter to
bring him forth to the people. That word Easter in the New Testament,
if you look that word up in a concordance, and in my Bible I have a reference,
I've got a center margin, and there's a reference to Mark 14.1,
which that verse will give you another way of saying Easter,
okay? But if you look it up in a Bible
concordance, the word Easter in the New Testament, is the exact same word as Passover
in the Old Testament. Same word. Passover is the Hebrew
language word for it. Easter is the Greek language
word for it. But it's the same word. It's
interchangeable. If you knew both languages, it
would be interchangeable. In English, we say grace. In
Chichihua, the Malawian people say chisomo, same word. In English, we say thank you.
In Spanish, they say gracias, same word. Easter, Passover, same word,
interchangeable. When you see one, you can use
the other. If we want to understand what
Easter is all about, if we have any interest in actually understanding
what Easter is all about, what our focus should be on in this,
what we should be remembering, what we should be celebrating
today, this is a celebration, a God-commanded celebration. If we want to understand that,
we need to look at the Old Testament Passover That's the only way
we can know. So turn with me to Exodus chapter
12. Exodus chapter 12, the children of Israel We're in bondage right
here to Egypt. And because of Pharaoh's sin
against God, God sent plagues to Egypt. And on God's last plague,
he said, he said, number 10, this is the last one, death is
going to come to every house. He said the first born male in
every house is going to die, okay? No exemptions, no exceptions. What is this weekend all about?
All right, what is this weekend all about? Death in every house. That's what it's all about. This is why the whole thing started.
Death because of sin. What is this weekend all about?
Dealing with sin. That's what it's all about. Death because of sin, death to
every house. The firstborn male of every Egyptian
house, the firstborn male of every Israelite house. Every
house, no exceptions, every house. But, he said for Israel, his
chosen people, his elect people, he said, I'm going to provide
a substitute. Death has to come to their house
too. But he said, I'm gonna provide
a substitute. I'm going to provide one to die in the place of that
firstborn male. One to bear that death for the
house, so the house doesn't have to. one to die so the house can
live. And he said that substitute is
going to be a lamb. All right, now look at Exodus
12, verse one. And the Lord spake unto Moses
and Aaron in the land of Egypt, saying, this month shall be unto
you the beginning of months, It shall be the first month of
the year to you. Speak ye unto all the congregation
of Israel, saying, in the tenth day of this month, they shall
take to them every man a lamb, according to the house of their
fathers, a lamb for a house. And if the household be too little
for the lamb, let him and his neighbor next unto his house
take it according to the number of souls. Every man according
to his eating shall make your count for the lamb. Your lamb
shall be without blemish. A male of the first year. And I have so much, I don't have
time to build up to any big crescendo. Go ahead and start reading between
the lines. See Christ in this, okay? Your lamb shall be without blemish,
a male of the first year. You shall take it out from the
sheep or from the goats, and you shall keep it up until the
14th day of the same month. And the whole assembly of the
congregation of Israel shall kill it in the evening. And they shall take of the blood
and strike it on the two side posts and on the upper door post
of the houses, wherein they shall eat it. And they shall eat the
flesh in that night, roast with fire and unleavened bread, and
with bitter herbs shall they eat it. Eat none of it raw, nor
sodden at all with water, but roast with fire." This lamb has
to bear the fire. His head with his legs and the
pertinence thereof. And you shall let nothing of
it remain until the morning. And that which remaineth of it
until the morning shall you burn with fire. And thus shall you
eat it with your loins girded, your shoes on your feet, and
your staff in your hand. And you shall eat it in haste.
It is the Lord's Passover." That is the Lord's Passover. interchangeable with another
word. Verse 12, for I will pass through the land of Egypt this
night and will smite all the firstborn in the land of Egypt,
both man and beast, and against all the gods of Egypt I will
execute judgment. I am the Lord. And the blood
shall be to you for a token upon the houses where you are. And
when I see the blood, I will pass over you. And the plague shall not be upon
you to destroy you when I smite the land of Egypt. He said, when
I see I'm coming through, and when I see that death has already
come here, Death has already been satisfied
here. Blood has already been shed as
a payment for sin here. He said, when I see the bloody
death of that innocent victim sacrifice, I will Easter you. When I see that, I'm going to
Easter you. I will Passover you. and move
on to the next house. I will spare you and then bring
death to the next house." And that's exactly what he did according
to his promise on Easter weekend. God came through the land. And
he brought horror to house after house after house, screaming,
crying, wailing. But Israel dwelt safe. Israel sat in their houses under
the blood. They stayed right there sitting
under that blood while all of that judgment and all of that
death and all of that destruction was going on around them. Look
at verse 29. And it came to pass that at midnight
the Lord smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the
firstborn of Pharaoh that sat on his throne unto the firstborn
of the captive that was in the dungeon and all the firstborn
of cattle. And Pharaoh rose up in the night,
he and all his servants, and all the Egyptians. And there
was a great cry in Egypt, for there was not a house where there
was not one dead. Verse 31, and he called for Moses
and Aaron by night and said, rise up and get you forth from
among my people, both you and the children of Israel, and go
serve the Lord as you've said. Get out of here. We don't want
you anymore. Verse 40, now the sojourning
of the children of Israel who dwelt in Egypt was 430 years. And it came to pass at the end
of the 430 years, even the selfsame day, it came to pass that all
the host of the Lord went out from the land of Egypt, it is
a night to be much observed unto the Lord for bringing them out
from the land of Egypt. This is that night of the Lord
to be observed of all the children of Israel in their generations. Easter. That's Easter. That's Easter. It's amazing,
isn't it? Shocking. It's kind of shocking,
isn't it? Verse 14 says, and this day shall
be unto you for a memorial, and you shall keep it a feast to
the Lord throughout your generations. You shall keep it a feast by
an ordinance forever. Verse 26. And it shall come to pass when
your children shall say unto you, What mean ye by this service? What is Easter weekend all about? What is this feast celebration
all about? Verse 26, It shall come to pass
when your children shall say unto you, What mean ye by this
service? That you shall say, It is the
sacrifice of the Lord's Passover. who passed over the houses of
the children of Israel in Egypt when he smoked the Egyptians
and delivered our houses and the people bowed the head and
worshiped. Now that's the feast of the Passover,
all right? I've been preaching now for 20 minutes. I timed it, I had a
one hour message. I don't do one hour messages.
If you know anything about me, I try to be as brief as I can.
So, I took a section out from the Old Testament. We're gonna
be in the Old Testament and the New Testament. I took a section out.
I thought I'll just give you the highlights. And that brought
me down to 45 minutes. I don't do 45 minutes. So, In the New Testament scriptures
that you know very well, I'm gonna quote those to you, and
I think I can get it down to 30 minutes. But I want to show
you something from the Old Testament that we don't normally get to
see, okay? I'm telling you this so you can
really, don't think I'm gonna go an hour. Lock in with me here
for just a minute. I'm gonna show you something,
then I'm just gonna tell you something, and then we'll be
done, all right? What I just showed you was the
Feast of the Passover. Along with that feast, our Lord
commanded six other feasts for his people to observe. One of
them is announced right here in verse 17. You shall observe
the feast of unleavened bread. That was to be held the day after
Passover, okay? The Passover was Friday. Friday. Good Friday. That's why it was good. Not because
you get a vacation and you don't have to go to school and you
don't have to go to work. It's because God provided a lamb to
be slain for his people on that day. In the evening of that day. The gift of God's grace, the
gift of God's substitute for life came on that day, what we
call Friday. The next day, Saturday, God's
people were to observe the feast of unleavened bread. Leaven is a picture of sin. It's a picture of sin. God's
people were to partake of the bread that never had sin in it. And read between the lines and
see Christ in this, okay? That feast from the time it started
lasted seven days. Passover on Friday, unleavened
bread on Saturday for seven days. Turn over to Leviticus 23. Leviticus 23 verse 4. These are the feasts of the Lord,
even the holy convocations, which you shall proclaim in their seasons
in the fourteenth day of the first month at even is the Lord's
Passover. That's what we just read about
in Exodus 12. And on the 15th day of the same
month, that's the next day, is the Feast of Unleavened Bread
unto the Lord. Seven days you must eat unleavened
bread. Verse 7 says, In the first day
you shall have in holy convocation, you shall do no servile work
therein. The first day of that Day of
Unleavened Bread is the Sabbath. No work on the Sabbath, what
we call Saturday. Verse 9, And the Lord spake unto
Moses, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto
them, When ye be come into the land which I give unto you, and
shall reap the harvest thereof, then ye shall bring a sheaf,
that means a handful, of the first fruits of your harvest
unto the priest, and he shall wave the sheaf before the Lord
to be accepted for you on the morrow after the Sabbath, the
priest shall wave it. The morrow after the Sabbath
is Sunday. Okay? Friday, Saturday, Sunday. That was called the Feast of
First Fruits. Verse 15. And you shall count unto you
from the morrow after the sabbath, from the day that you brought
the sheaf of the wave offering, seven sabbaths shall be complete. Seven weeks. Okay? even unto
the morrow after the seventh Sabbath shall ye number fifty
days." Seven weeks. Seven days in a week. That's
49 days. He said add one more to it. That's
50 days. And you shall offer a new meat
offering unto the Lord. That was called the Feast of
Weeks or Pentecost. Fifty. Verse 23. And the Lord spake unto Moses,
saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, In the seventh
month, in the first day of the month, shall you have a Sabbath,
a memorial of blowing of trumpets, and holy convocation. That was
the feast of trumpets, or the feast of shouting, or the feast
of rejoicing. Verse 26. And the Lord spake
unto Moses, saying, Also on the tenth day of this seventh month
there shall be a day of atonement. It shall be a holy convocation
unto you, and you shall afflict your souls and offer an offering
made by fire unto the Lord. That was called the Feast of
Atonement, but it was not actually a feast. That one was a fast. Not a feast, but a fast. It was a denying of self on the
day of atonement. One more, verse 33. And the Lord spake unto Moses,
saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, The fifteenth
day of this seventh month shall be the Feast of Tabernacles for
seven days unto the Lord. The Feast of Tabernacles, okay?
Verse 44. It says, And Moses declared unto
the children of Israel the Feasts of the Lord. Passover. Unleavened
bread, first fruits, weeks, trumpets, atonement, tabernacle. Can we see the line of salvation
in that? Can we see what it took for God
to save his people from redemption to glorification? We could go through, I was gonna
go through Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Ezra. I was gonna show you how God's
people kept and observed those feasts. God commanded them to,
they did. And the reason they did is because
all of those feasts were pointing to something. All of those feasts
pointed to someone That someone is what this is all about. That someone is who this will
forever be about. All right, now, just listen. I was gonna have you turn, but
just listen, okay? This is John 1, verse 29, just
listen. John the Baptist was sent to
prepare the way of the Lord. And here is the announcement.
This is the opening declaration to the world concerning the ministry
of the Lord Jesus Christ. The next day, John seeth Jesus
coming unto him and said, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh
away the sin of the world. The Passover lamb. There he is. Behold the Easter
lamb. God's provided substitute to
die in our stand. 1 Corinthians 5 verse 7 says, Christ
our Passover is sacrificed for us. Christ, our Passover. The Passover is not just a feast
of remembrance. The Passover is a person. It's
a person. That's the point of this. That's
what I want us to get a hold of. Easter is a person. If we walk out of here remembering
one thing, you remember anything he said? Remember this, Easter
is a person. His name is Jesus Christ. That
Passover is a person. Christ is our Passover. All right,
now listen to this. John chapter six, the next feast
that was given was the feast of unleavened bread. John 6,
35 said, Jesus said unto them, I am the bread. I am the bread of life. He that cometh to me shall never
hunger. He that believeth on me shall never thirst. Verse
51, he said, I'm the living bread which came down from heaven.
If any man eat of this bread, he'll live forever. And the bread
that I'll give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the
world. Christ is our unleavened bread. He said, this is my body broken
for you. Here is 1 Corinthians 15, the
feast that was given for Sunday, today. The feast we're supposed
to be observing today is called the Feast of First Fruits. All
right, now listen to this. This is 1 Corinthians 15, a few
verses here, 16 to 20. If the dead rise not, then is
not Christ raised. And if Christ be not raised,
your faith is vain, you are yet in your sins. Then they also
which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished. If in this life
only we have hope in Christ, we're of all men most miserable.
But now is Christ risen from the dead and become the first
fruits of them that slept? He is our first fruits. Christ is the first fruit. Everyone's
theme today is He is risen. Everybody, that's the theme of
today, He is risen. The event, the event, okay? Everybody is looking to an event.
Everybody's looking to an event, the resurrection. This is serious. Did you know the resurrection
is not an event? In John 11, Martha said, I know
my brother will rise in, she was talking about the event,
the resurrection. The Lord said, Martha, I am the
resurrection. I'm the resurrection. Some of
these started on the Sabbath. You couldn't do any work on the
Sabbath. Why? Christ is the Sabbath. It's not a day. We don't work
because he finished it all. He accomplished it all on the
cross of Calvary. He is our Sabbath. We're resting
on him. He is our resurrection. We have
risen in him. I pray the Lord might teach us
what that means. We're not celebrating an event, we're celebrating a
person. The Passover, He's the bread, He's the first fruits
from the dead. All right, the fourth feast was the feast of
weeks, right here in 1 Corinthians 15, verse 22 says that, as in
Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. The time, life, it's life that
goes by. Alive in Christ, Colossians 3
says, Christ who is our life, in him we live and move and have
our being. We don't just have life, he is
our life. He is our life. Here's the fifth
feast, the feast of trumpets. All right, listen to this. First
Corinthians 15, verse 51. Behold, I show you a mystery.
We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed in a moment
in the twinkling of an eye at the last trump, for the trumpet
shall sound and the dead shall be raised incorruptible and we
shall be changed. The trumpet shall sound. Like
when the children of Israel, don't you love that story? The
children of Israel marched around Jericho blowing their trumpets. And on the last round, God said,
shout. And the walls came crumbling
down. John, on the Isle of Patmos,
said, Revelation chapter one, he said, I heard a voice behind
me talking. It sounded just like a trumpet. And he said, I came crumbling
down. That's what happens when God talks. He said it was the
voice of Jesus Christ. He is our trumpet. He's our shouting. He's our rejoicing. Second Corinthians
5 verse 18. The sixth feast was the feast
of atonement. It means reconciliation. All
things are of God who hath reconciled us, that means atoned us to himself
by Jesus Christ and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation,
the ministry of atonement. To know that God was in Christ
reconciling or atoning the world unto himself. He's our atonement. Our atonement
is not a condition, it's a person. He's our high priest of atonement,
our sacrifice of atonement, our altar of atonement. He's all
of it in all of it. The last one is Revelation 21,
the Feast of Tabernacles. Revelation 21 three says, I heard
a great voice out of heaven saying, behold, the tabernacle of God
is with men. He will dwell with them. They'll
be his people. God himself shall be with them
and be their God. Verse 22 right there says, I
saw no temple therein for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb
are the temple of it. He is our tabernacle. He is our dwelling place. He's
everything. He's everything. Everything is
concerning Him. Today is not about a day. It's not about an
event. It's all about Him. All about
Him. May the Lord truly show us Him. Christ our Easter. our sacrifice,
our death, our burial, our resurrection, our life, our everything. Amen.